Abstract
Many workers who engage in manual material handling (MMH) jobs experience high physical demands that are associated with work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). Quantifying the physical demands of a job is important for identifying high risk jobs and is a legal requirement in the United States for hiring and return to work following injury. Currently, most physical demand analyses (PDAs) are performed by experts using observational and semi-quantitative methods. The lack of accuracy and reliability of these methods can be problematic, particularly when identifying restrictions during the return-to-work process. Further, when a worker does return-to-work on modified duty, there is no way to track compliance to work restrictions conflating the effectiveness of the work restrictions versus adherence to them. To address this, we applied a deep learning model to data from eight inertial measurement units (IMUs) to predict 15 occupational physical activities. Overall, a 95% accuracy was reached for predicting isolated occupational physical activities. However, when applied to more complex tasks that combined occupational physical activities (OPAs), accuracy varied widely (0–95%). More work is needed to accurately predict OPAs when combined into simulated work tasks.
Highlights
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are injuries or pain involving the joints, ligaments, muscles, nerves, tendons, and/or structures that support the limbs, neck, and back [1,2]
This laboratory study collected kinematic data from 8 inertial measurement units (IMUs) worn on 8 different body segments by participants who performed occupational physical activities (OPAs) common in manual material handling (MMH) jobs [9,13,22,23,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]
A convolution neural network model was applied to data from 8 IMUs to predict which of the 15 OPAs were being performed during each second of analysis
Summary
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are injuries or pain involving the joints, ligaments, muscles, nerves, tendons, and/or structures that support the limbs, neck, and back [1,2]. One of the most prevalent WMSDs is low back pain [5], which is associated with physically demanding tasks that include handling heavy loads repeatedly and in awkward postures [6,7]. In the US, it is a required part of a job description and must be written in compliance with the American Disabilities Act. The PDA includes information on the approximate duration (% of day) and magnitude (load) that different occupational physical activities (OPAs), such as lifting/lowering, carrying, kneeling, reaching, walking, and standing, take place. The PDA informs workers about the physical demands of a job before they are hired and it provides occupational health practitioners critical information for facilitating effective return to work programs should an injury occur
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